In a typical wireless communication network, wireless devices, also known as wireless communication devices, mobile stations, stations (STA) and/or user equipment (UE), communicate via a Radio Access Network (RAN) to one or more core networks (CN) belonging to different network operators. The RAN covers a geographical area which is divided into areas or cell areas, with each area or cell area being served by an access node e.g., a Wi-Fi access point or a radio base station (RBS), which in some networks may also be called, for example, a “NodeB” or “eNodeB”. The area or cell area is a geographical area where radio coverage is provided by the access node. The access node communicates over an air interface operating on radio frequencies with the wireless device within range of the access node.
A Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation telecommunication network, which evolved from the second generation (2G) Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM). The UMTS terrestrial radio access network (UTRAN) is essentially a RAN using wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) and/or High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) for UEs. In a forum known as the Third
Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), telecommunications suppliers propose and agree upon standards for third generation networks and UTRAN specifically, and investigate enhanced data rate and radio capacity. In some RANs, e.g. as in UMTS, several access nodes may be connected, e.g., by landlines or microwave, to a controller node, such as a radio network controller (RNC) or a base station controller (BSC), which supervises and coordinates various activities of the plural access nodes connected thereto. The RNCs are typically connected to one or more core networks.
Specifications for the Evolved Packet System (EPS) have been completed within the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and this work continues in the coming 3GPP releases. The EPS comprises the Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN), also known as the Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio access network, and the Evolved Packet Core (EPC), also known as System Architecture Evolution (SAE) core network. E-UTRAN/LTE is a variant of a 3GPP radio access technology wherein the radio base station nodes are directly connected to the EPC core network rather than to RNCs. In general, in E-UTRAN/LTE the functions of an RNC are distributed between the radio base stations, e.g. eNodeBs in LTE, and the core network. As such, the Radio Access Network (RAN) of an EPS has an essentially “flat” architecture comprising radio base stations connected directly to one or more core networks, i.e. they are not connected to RNCs.
Most current Wi-Fi deployments, also referred to as Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) deployments, are wireless communication networks that are totally separate from telecommunication networks, and can be seen as a non-integrated network from the wireless device perspective. Most operating systems (OS) for wireless devices support a simple Wi-Fi offloading mechanism where a wireless device immediately switches all its Internet Protocol (IP) traffic to a Wi-Fi network upon a detection of a suitable network with a received signal strength above a certain level. Henceforth, the decision to offload to a Wi-Fi network or not is referred to as access selection strategy and the term “W-Fi-if-coverage” is used to refer to the aforementioned strategy of selecting Wi-Fi whenever such a network is detected.
In dense wireless environments, e.g. in cities, radio access nodes such as IEEE 802.11.x access points, IEEE 802.15.4.x wireless gateways, as well as upcoming radio base stations, use wireless channels independently of each other in a same radio spectrum band. As a result, wireless devices or STAs that associate with these radio access nodes experience interference from wireless devices associated with other radio access nodes in proximity. This results in a reduced performance of the wireless communication network.